As part of the Festival d’Automne’s tribute to her work, the choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker led a “Slow Walk” – actually five walks of about three-quarters of a mile over four hours from different points around the Place de la République, the rally point – a place Karine and I haven’t seriously been since the popular rally for liberal values following the appalling 2015 mass murders here in Paris.
Since it costs nothing and requires a unique human skill, walking always speaks to us. So, this past Sunday, first day of Fall, ‘though it was mostly raining in that sudden, voluminous, gatling-gun way it rains these days, we went in for a Slow Walk.
For de Keersmaeker, a Slow Walk is “Just walk. Slow down the rhythm and rediscover your joints, your pulse, your weight and slip into another relationship with time and
movement”.
Most Slow Walkers translated de Keersmaeker’s idea, as Karine did, as a very slow, deliberate step, one foot in front of the other, at a pace 16-times slower than an average one. Karine says a Slow Walk is a meditation.
I didn’t look at it this way, though; I live to move and move to live; standing still is not my usual way to understanding. Also, I no longer do anything that makes me uncomfortable, like stand in the rain, unless the payback is way above real or analogous minimum wage, or there’s just no help for it.
The slogan of the Slow Walk was “My walking is my dance”. I chose to translate that into a Slow Walk in the way any other cheerful four-year old would: by moving my butt in a way I hoped would attract attention, chatting up
strangers and as often as possible sloughing off to get cake and ice cream and out of the rain.
Once all of us diverse and differently-abled slow walkers had arrived at the Place de la République, the rain stopped.
The sky cleared slightly, even, and, standing beneath the monumental statue of Marianne and her friends Liberté, Egalité Fraternité, de Keersmaeker gave us a dance lesson: had us running this way and that way, fast and slow, hopping, flailing and stretching across the square.
When de Keersmaeker had us all warmed up, we danced both rainlessly and brainlessly together for a bit under an hour. A big change from last time, but not so much of one as you might think.
Then, as the rain began again, we all quickly scattered to the four metros and homeward.
At home, I found a note from Kata. Since she has been back in Japan, she wrote, she has been thinking about Why do we dance? She had one possible response; she wanted to share it.
“We dance because we long to see our friends‘ perspectives,” she wrote. “We cannot experience others’ views. We say ‘red,’ but we might all actually see different colors. It happens even for best friends! And this [inability to experience others’ experience] is very empty and sad. So, I thought, ‘We dance to the same rhythm to touch each other and so to [feel with each other]’.
"I hope my opinion is not irrelevant for you.”
Another fine post! -- DL
Posted by: The Best American Poetry | October 24, 2018 at 05:14 PM